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I dont think there is much enthusiasm for Macron...huge amount abstained from voting...most can see he is a tool. Not much will change. Its basically more of the same. People just see it as the least-worst-option.
I dont see anything in him that is much different to the current leader Francoise Hollande.
He wont dare question the EU on anything, despite the fact there are gaping holes in the system.

Its just he was up against Marine Le-Pen...the Front National has such a toxic legacy in France....
Also she was NO Donald Trump terrible public speaker...she had none of Trumps machevillian ability to draw people in....

Also i cant imagine Nigel Farage from UKIP winning an election in the UK either...

Had it been someone of the rightwing without out the National Front baggage i reckon they could have won..i thought Francis Fillon was going to win..but the corruption scandal brought him down.

More of the same vs. highly-corrosive and willfully destructive bigotry-promoting fascism-fetishizing is a pretty clear fight. Whine about a lack of further progress when you don't have somebody trying to blow it all up. A sense of perspective goes a long way and this idea that people shouldn't be thrilled that someone who isn't a racist fuckhead isn't going to be in a charge of a major first world nation when their main opponent claimed that Jews shouldn't be allowed to weare yamulkes in public is babyish and stupid. It makes people seem like smug and pseudointellectual downtalkers rather than people having a conversation.

To say "It's great that Le Pen has been defeated and I hope that in the future competition is less between centrists and right-wing extremists and more between left-wing candidates and centrists" is reasonable. To act like everyone happy a centrist beat out a lunatic is somehow stupid or naive just makes you look like a tool.

I dont think there is much enthusiasm for Macron...huge amount abstained from voting...most can see he is a tool. Not much will change. Its basically more of the same. People just see it as the least-worst-option.

The turnout hasn't been this low in decades. I don't know if the official numbers exist yet, but I was seeing some estimates saying as far back as ~50 years.

It's amazing that everyone can see the recurring pattern of Russian interference and become outraged, but the pattern of the candidates that citizens are forced to choose between...? nah, its not a conspiracy. that's just "how it is" guys! Nevermind the fact that it occurs in different countries with different voting systems and different political landscapes...

The turnout hasn't been this low in decades. I don't know if the official numbers exist yet, but I was seeing some estimates saying as far back as ~50 years.

It's amazing that everyone can see the recurring pattern of Russian interference and become outraged, but the pattern of the candidates that citizens are forced to choose between...? nah, its not a conspiracy. that's just "how it is" guys! Nevermind the fact that it occurs in different countries with different voting systems and different political landscapes...

The number I saw for the turnout in France is 74%; and since we're comparing global patterns against the USA, that is still 10% more French votes per capita than turned out for America's election of Obama in 2008 (which was the highest turnout in the USA for decades). Regarding your second point; this was the final round of a runoff ballot, where the options had already fallen away to the two front runners only. So the 'pattern' here that you hate is... what exactly? Having to choose?

The number I saw for the turnout in France is 74%; and since we're comparing global patterns against the USA, that is still 10% more French votes per capita than turned out for America's election of Obama in 2008 (which was the highest turnout in the USA for decades).

This doesn't say anything about trends for France, which was what I was talking about. If voter turnout ends up being lower than it has ever been in the last X decades, that says something.

Originally Posted by botley

Regarding your second point; this was the final round of a runoff ballot, where the options had already fallen away to the two front runners only. So the 'pattern' here that you hate is... what exactly? Having to choose?

And the US had primaries with a bunch of candidates. It doesn't matter, and thats the point i was making: the end "choice" being between an establishment candidate who is deep with the banks vs a racist nationalist. Its a theme that keeps recurring in multiple countries despite different systems and different politics.

Primaries aren't comparable to a general runoff. The majority of French voters chose those two candidates over everyone else, and then chose between them. In that scenario, moderate status-quo centrism wins, and I'm not jumping for joy about it, but I totally understand why and it's not because banks rule everything.

Hey-oh! Well that was a turn up for the books! A well hung parliament.
While I should cite my sources other than Twitter, word on the street is there was a massive youth / under 25 turn out, and would you look at that, they don't like the Conservatives nor the idea of 5 more years...
In liberal/Labour terms, this was pretty much the best result they could hope for... Wonder what happens next? Don't want to get my hopes up again...

Hey-oh! Well that was a turn up for the books! A well hung parliament.
While I should cite my sources other than Twitter, word on the street is there was a massive youth / under 25 turn out, and would you look at that, they don't like the Conservatives nor the idea of 5 more years...
In liberal/Labour terms, this was pretty much the best result they could hope for... Wonder what happens next? Don't want to get my hopes up again...

In the meantime article 50 has been triggered, now we've already lost 3 months and the Tories will have another leadership contest, more dithering. Can't we just give up brexit as a bad job? I honestly don't think people gung ho for brexit realised how shit our politicians are.

Very much a day of ups and downs. Personally I'm thrilled to see how successful Labour and Corbyn have been, and I'm particularly happy that my home constituency has a Labour MP for the first time ever. No lurching to the right there!

But yes, a Tory deal with DUP is not a positive step. I was hoping there would be enough for a Labour / SNP / Lib Dem coalition, but I guess that's not happening now. I'm very much against 'Brexit' (ughh), but if it does have to happen I'd like to see sensible cross-party negotiations that can lead to a reasonably positive outcome. What are the chances of that though?

Great to see UKIP effectively finished, and interesting to see SNP losing out quite badly - I still don't know what happened there.

What I'm really happy about though is seeing the right wing press failing so miserably to get their side in a majority, despite huge amounts of scaremongering against Corbyn. Sadly we have to include the BBC in that, and not just Murdoch and friends. Maybe we'll see some lessons learned, even if we are still dealing with a difficult outcome. The stories of high turnouts across the country, with particular focus on the engagement of 18-25 year olds, is also very positive.

I thought the weirdest thing about the results which not many have mentioned in the media was seeing the Conservatives resurrected in Scotland...best for them in Scotland since 1983.
This was unimaginable 10 years ago..a tory was seen as subhuman..justvshows the lengths people are willing to go to avoid a second referendum. SNP would do so much better. If they stopped focusing on independence and only on devolved power.
i can see why Labour gained ground...although i think Corbyns vision is too utopian and cant stand his team around him he is 100 percent genuine and really got people excited...
i was amazed at how Robotic and boring and uninspiring Theresa May was...she was a worse campaigner than Hillary Clinton.

yup... saw that coalition happening once the last results were coming in. Dreadful how they cling in there by jumping into bed with some of the most hateful MPs. now at the very least, the opposition is in a position to oppose, its not great, but it doesn't take much for this government to fail at pushing bills, now if only that ol proportional representation thing had come in... Labour, LD, SNP, PC together outnumber the right wing parties in terms of votes, thats something to be proud of.

I guess this could have gone a lot worse. May has hobbled herself unnecessarily, and Labour has seen a surge of support.
Makes me think of Bernie Sanders a bit: popular passion, a surge of enthusiasm, ultimately lost, conservatives still in power.
Conservatives still have a majority, they are still the biggest party in the UK by 57 seats. People are still voting to the right in these times of economic turbulence.

France has been under a state of emergency for 2 years, there are men with scary machine guns outside every iconic Paris tourist spot, the UK is spending billions on its security apparatus because it has to try and save lives, this money could be going to poor people.
Most of the UK and Frances multiculturalism is good but there are problems Poland does not want to deal with the problems,

its totally different to the western mindset, Poland adores Western Europe and the UK, and France but cannot understand its tolerance for people who want to kill them, remember Poland was under both Nazi and Soviet occupation for 50 years, millions died, they hate totalitrainism of any form.
West Europe Is very different from Eastern Europe

France has been under a state of emergency for 2 years, there are men with scary machine guns outside every iconic Paris tourist spot, the UK is spending billions on its security apparatus because it has to try and save lives, this money could be going to poor people.
Most of the UK and Frances multiculturalism is good but there are problems Poland does not want to deal with the problems,

its totally different to the western mindset, Poland adores Western Europe and the UK, and France but cannot understand its tolerance for people who want to kill them, remember Poland was under both Nazi and Soviet occupation for 50 years, millions died, they hate totalitrainism of any form.
West Europe Is very different from Eastern Europe

I am originally from Poland and still have many family and friends there. I understand the culture and the current situation. The culture there is totally homogenized and its history makes a lot of people very resistant to anything that might be viewed as an "invading" force... whether the threat is rational or not. This is nothing new. What is a huge problem there right now is the ruling government who can only be described as Trump like but even more so. They are very much playing on the fears of people when it comes to open borders, Russia, and constantly label their opponents as traitors (this includes cyclists and vegetarians). They have taken over the nation's news outlets and the news hour is an incredible example of propaganda. My biggest gripe is what they are doing to the country and how much damage they can still do with their remaining 2-3 years (Although chances of their re election is high). One of those things includes that they do not directly address these far right factions while blatantly taking action against the opposition of the far right which also happens to be their opposition... Although they did block Richard Spencer from entering the country.

I am originally from Poland and still have many family and friends there. I understand the culture and the current situation. The culture there is totally homogenized and its history makes a lot of people very resistant to anything that might be viewed as an "invading" force... whether the threat is rational or not. This is nothing new. What is a huge problem there right now is the ruling government who can only be described as Trump like but even more so. They are very much playing on the fears of people when it comes to open borders, Russia, and constantly label their opponents as traitors (this includes cyclists and vegetarians). They have taken over the nation's news outlets and the news hour is an incredible example of propaganda. My biggest gripe is what they are doing to the country and how much damage they can still do with their remaining 2-3 years (Although chances of their re election is high). One of those things includes that they do not directly address these far right factions while blatantly taking action against the opposition of the far right which also happens to be their opposition... Although they did block Richard Spencer from entering the country.

I agree there is definitely stuff to worry about the Polish government, its not gone full authoritarian yet however its made a dramatic shift to the right, I think stuff like Trump and Brexit may have galvanized them.

I think they are starting to see the EU as an occupying force, its not just Poland its Hungary of course and Czech Republic, Baltic states, feel like the EU is trying to impose something on them they don't want, the EU did not fully understand the rather big cultural differences when they joined in 2004, i think its great they joined the EU, but there is definetly a growing East West divide in the EU.

Our prime minister bashed the West once more a few days ago with some really strong words. I don't want to quote snippets out of context, you can probably find translations if you want to. Our minister of defence even quoted Donald Trump.

Anyway, it is extremely likely that they will win the election again next year by a large margin and that means a right government for at least 2022. No party could win three times in a row since the establishment of the Third Republic (1989). The left is a joke and they are in shambles. The biggest leftist party was already fading into obscurity when they put all their credibility in their agenda for preventing and later calling for demolishing the fence at our border and advocating the help of immigrants. An absolute disaster, as that fence will probably be the most well-received decision of this government's current term. As a leftist, you have like 5 or 6 alternatives to choose from, thus the end result being a bunch of votes going into the void. The left can't create a working coalition for nearly 8 years now to save their lives.

A more interesting thing is that our right wing government absolutely schooled the far right as well. During the immigrant-crisis, the far right tried their best to pull ahead with their hate-train, but they are absolute garbage politicians. Except their leader, who - seeing how being racist fucks does not work - tried to consolidate his party, basically mimicking our prime minister's. So now even the far right is being fractured, while the leader can't compete with Orbán. When our prime minister implies that you are homosexual through a joke, and states it as a fact that you are being a bitch (pretty much an exact translation; bitch as in servant) of Soros, and you can't make a good comeback... Yeah, then you are doomed.

The propaganda machine is in "can't stop, won't stop" mode for like 3 years now. Anti-Soros advertisements and questionnaires are plastered EVERYWHERE, absolutely insufferable. But it works, because if you would try to look at the West for help or guidance, all you see are headless chickens. What's happening here is the failure of the EU.

Also, the fucked up peace-treaties after WW2 pretty much made Central- and Eastern-Europe extremely prone to right wing influence. This area's suffering from nationalism related problems has been historic, but when you blindly chop up countries with an "it'll do" mentality, you are just asking for trouble down the line.

Not just bad, a threat to national security - whitehall has to be an impartial broker in the good Friday agreement. How can it fulfil that role when it's in coalition with one side and bunging them money?

The Hungarian elections are over. People predicted that Fidesz can bleed, but only if many people will show up to cast their votes, so we had a never to be seen campaign, which boiled down to "just vote". We almost broke a record in attendance rate, so people from the opposition were opening champagnes. The result? Fidesz demolished everyone and they've regained their 2/3 in the parliament, which they had lost 3 years ago.

Heads are rolling right now from the opposition. 4 years too late, but hey, at least it's happening.